Oh come on, a trading journal? Are you serious? I think this was my exact reaction when I asked a very successful crypto trader for a “secret tip.”
I really thought he was kidding me. I expected things like a secret strategy, some sophisticated tools, or bots he used. But no. He was serious. He said, “Start a crypto trading journal” once again and added, “Begin to document your trading journey. Do it consistently for 100 days, and you will surprised how your results improve.
That definitely wasn’t the answer I was looking for. I wanted some quick actions I could implement, things that would catapult my trading success to new heights. However, I trusted this guy, and his success was outstanding, so I gave it a try.
My Humble Beginnings With A Crypto Trading Journal
As a first step, I prepared an Excel sheet. I started with 5-6 columns, just documenting the essential things: start and end, token pair, profit/loss. Soon, I recognized that I needed more attributes to gain some insights out of my journal. So, I added columns for stuff like used strategy, day and time of trading, entry and exit signals, etc.
I added every trade to my journal. Surprisingly, I observed an improvement quite rapidly. Since I documented my trades before executing them, I became more conscious. As a result, I didn’t execute some trades I would have executed before using a journal (which usually was a good decision).
However, the cool part started after a few weeks when I had enough data to analyze. I literally analyzed everything. I built sophisticated lookup tables and assessed any relation I could think of: Do BTC long trades using my favorite strategy perform better on Mondays or Tuesdays? In the morning or evening? Am I more successful when I am emotionally calm or excited? Is there a relation between the take-profit level and my emotions? And so on.
Certainly, not all of my analyses made sense, and I had to be careful not to start wasting time analyzing nonsense.
Nevertheless, the important fact was that I built a data source that turned out to be an immense source of knowledge. I just have to find out how to utilize it.
Crypto Trading Journal — An Essential Pillar of my Trading Framework
Fast-forward to today: Although I don’t trade as much as I did when I started with the trade journal, the journal is still one of the essential pillars of my trading framework. I don’t execute a trade without documenting it.
Why? Because my friend was absolutely right: My trading results got better and better. I didn’t even have to wait 100 days because I quickly learned that a crypto trading journal is much more than just documentation: It structures your trading process, boosts your confidence, helps you stay on course, and creates a limitless source of knowledge.
I once read that one difference between successful and unsuccessful people (in this case, traders) is that the successful ones are willing to do the boring stuff. It’s about a magic trick, that super mysterious strategy, or the newest tool. No, it’s much easier: Putting in the work and doing the boring stuff, a.k.a journaling the trades.
Give it a try! And if it works for you, too, I would love to hear your success story.
What’s Next?
If you want to get started with a crypto trading journal, I have two free tools you can use:
1 — We developed a free app, “Crypto OS Trading Journal,” that lets you easily track your trades and gives you access to the most essential analysis. Check it out here!
2 — You can also use my Notion templates. Available for free here!
